Cold Homes, Burning Fires
Brooklyn Jamison
I was frustrated.
No matter how many times I dipped my brush into the orange, the yellow, the gold, the water, I never got the right color strands of the shining red hair.
I had dreamed this, woke in a sweaty terror as I had when my powers first began manifesting. Since then, I hadn't been able to sleep at all. Not until I was able to perfectly reflect her onto the canvas.
Eddie watched from a distance. Never getting too close to the mess this canvas and I were. He would tell me what was happening outside, how quickly the population was growing. As the sun began to set on the second day of staring at the red haired girl in the lilac dress, he begged me to come to bed.
"I just don't know her. I need to put her here and then I can know her," I reply, going to press the brush on the canvas again.
His hand envelopes mine, stopping me before the two mediums can collide. "It's not Rain?"
I shake my head curtly. "No. Agent Rain's eyes are green. This girl has blue eyes."
"It'd help if she was facing me to know that," he laughs, pulling me to his chest, though my eyes stay glued on the painting.
"This was all I saw of her."
"Then how do you know her eyes are blue?" he pulls away.
I shrug, "I just know, Ed."
He then picks me up, carrying me through our too-big-too-cold home. He asks me everything about my dream with her, and I tell him all that I can. She told me to follow her, and we continued through a woodland area. I was slower than I usually am, blaming it on the fact that it was a dream. When we reach a clearing in the thick of the trees though, there are unicorns mutilated in every direction, piled on top of each other like spare parts in a junkyard.
"Genocide of unicorns creates severely adulterated magics. No one's been insane enough to kill a unicorn in a long time," he reasons with me.
"Marboro Mortem hasn't been around for a long time," I refute.
The killing of a unicorn grants an intense amount of dark magic onto the murderer. But it also strips away a piece of their soul. Ideally, a mass slaughter would leave you soulless.
He pulls the blanket over us as we settle into this foreign bed. Neither of us have changed out of our clothes from the day, but it's so cold in this house that I don't even want to.
Eddie kisses my forehead and brushes a hair out of my face, tucking it behind my braid. "You know Rose is the only one who hasn't been too scared of what those folders say."
I grimace. "Rose is the only one who can't die."
∴∵
The next morning, Eddie and I get ready for our meeting with the others.
He reads to me the important parts of his folder, saying we'll eventually be battling Marboro's army. Adamas Steele had known for a while that she was returning, he'd been planning this for a century. How he knew any of us would come to be in the same generation is beyond me though. We were allowed to travel into the town a few miles away three days a week, nothing more than that. And less than that was advised.
"This says we are the spearheads for the revolution. Marboro will try to start a magical revolution-"
"Is he getting all this from a prophecy? Because this is all sounding familiar, Ed."
